Despite many people ‘in the industry’ doubting if an official online music store could ever turn around the declining music sales, the concept (/lock-in?!) of the best mp3 player and a seamless way to legally purchase music for it via an online store turned out to be a big hit (thank you Steve! 😉 ).

The iTunes Store has been the biggest music vendor in the United States since April 2008 and the biggest music vendor in the world since February 2010, and despite the increased competition it still has a 64% market share in the USA.

The iTunes Store contains over 26 million songs, and became a full-blown digital content store with the addition of Books, Movies, TV Shows and Apps to the Store. Especially the Apps made the iTunes Store fly high; while in 10 years an impressive 25+ billion songs have been sold, in less than 5 years 45 (!!) billion Apps have been purchased/downloaded!